9 Things We Learned From the 2016 Oscars

1. Hollywood overdoes everything—even self-flagellation.
Ever since the Academy got quite rightly pilloried for its nominations being so white, a symptom of the obvious racism in the whole industry, Hollywood has been tying itself in knots to make amends. Heck, the Screen Actors Guild pointedly gave two awards to the Oscar-snubbed Idris Elba. This reached its peak at last night’s Oscar show, which may have entered the Guinness World Records for the use of the word diversity. Host Chris Rock did his best to try to square the circle of calling out the industry for its failings while also, you know, hosting an awards show broadcast around the world. For the most part he did well, although I bet he envied Louis C.K., who only had to be funny (and killed it). Rock deftly put the absence of black contenders in historical perspective—pointing out that in the 1960s African-Americans faced worse things than a dearth of Oscar nominations—while still making the largely white audience squirm with his savage joke about how the annual “In Memoriam” reel should be of young black kids shot by the police on their way to the movies. Not everything Rock did worked (I could’ve done without the Girl Scout cookies), but if you wanted to know just how mirthless it’s possible to be about race and diversity, the Oscars carted out Sacha Baron Cohen to show you. As my colleague Nathan Heller tweeted: “That Ali G cameo was like the part of Austin Powers where Dr. Evil gets unfrozen and has all these pop-culturally relevant ideas from 1967.”

2. Sentiment is dead—in the acting category anyway.
We’ve all been hearing how the Academy was going to flip for the “narrative” (as everyone now refers to stories) of Sylvester Stallone’s triumphant return in Creed, where he’s as weathered as he once was muscle-bound. But these days, voters aren’t all about honoring Hollywood’s big old actors—I mean, beloved star Michael Keaton lost to Eddie Redmayne just last year. They’re about finding something new, even if in this case that new thing is the great British actor Mark Rylance, who pulled off the feat with the highest level of difficulty at the Oscars. He won an acting award while under-playing.

3. The industry likes its Best Actors to have earned it over the years.
Yes, I know, there are exceptions, like Redmayne last year. But when you think of winners such as Colin Firth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Matthew McConaughey, Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey—these are middle-aged guys who put in their time doing good work, often winning for roles that weren’t really their greatest. That’s what happened with Leonardo DiCaprio. Nobody thinks he was at his all-time best in The Revenant, but this was the year he finally cashed in the bonds he bought with his legendary performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The industry has wanted to give him an Oscar for 20 years, both for his talent and for his box-office pull—he’s the only Hollywood star big enough to get audiences to go see The Revenant. DiCaprio is now so thoroughly settled into his chairman of the board role that he handled his acceptance speech with effortless ease, and rather than boasting how hard it was making that movie, he used the forum to talk about global warming.

4. The industry prefers to anoint Best Actresses.
Only 26, Brie Larson had not only never been nominated before, she starred in a film that, frankly, didn’t make much money. Yet she’s really good in Room, has been really good in lots of other smaller roles that industry people noticed (even if the public didn’t), and, like Redmayne last year, just has a lovely vibe about her. When I met her, I couldn’t have thought she was more swell. She’s also enormously poised, as you could tell from her acceptance speech. She didn’t bawl or go all wobbly. She unboringly thanked everyone—including film festivals!—and got off the stage fast. Of course, this being Hollywood, which isn’t exactly known for giving women great roles, that Oscar doesn’t mean the industry wants her to keep making films like Room. She’s flying today to Vietnam to get back to work on her next picture—Kong: Skull Island.

5. There’s always some winner who just delights you.
For me, it was Mad Max: Fury Road’s costume designer, Jenny Beavan, who came up on stage wearing a leather jacket that seemed like it could have come from the film. Not only was she unflappably cool, but I was delighted to learn that in the ’90s she’d won for her costumes in A Room With a View. Has anyone ever nabbed Oscars for work so radically different?

6. It’s easier to win Best Supporting Actress if you should’ve been nominated as Best Actress.
This year’s race was a two-woman contest between Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl and Rooney Mara in Carol. Both were, of course, leading roles (Mara won Best Actress at Cannes), as was Patricia Arquette’s part in Boyhood last year. Naturally, being on-screen most of the time makes it far easier to register than competitors who are actually in supporting roles. Then again, the irony here is that Vikander actually deserved the prize for her far better performance in Ex Machina, in which she wasn’t the lead. So justice was perversely done. But still, it’s time for Academy voters to stop taking their cues from the Oscar-marketing divisions of the studios.

7. The industry still idolizes manly men.
While I loved Mad Max: Fury Road and found parts of The Revenant amazing, it’s emblematic that these two films filled with action and effects should dominate so many categories—nearly all the technical stuff, plus Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu. I was rooting for MadMax’s George Miller, not only because I think he did a much better job of directing—students will study his filmmaking here for years—but because, unlike Iñárritu, he didn’t spend months blustering about how heroically arduous it was making The Revenant. Hollywood guys just gobble that stuff up, and given how old male–centric the Academy is, I wasn’t surprised to see Iñárritu walk away with the statuette.

8. Whoever does the “In Memoriam” segment obviously has a wider range of interests and passions than the rest of the Academy.
While even outlier categories like Best Foreign Language Film tend to be drearily predictable—I knew Son of Saul would win the Oscar from the moment I saw it at Cannes last May—this annual homage to the departed boasted names that would otherwise never make it onto the show. Holly Woodlawn! Chantal Akerman! Film critic Richard Corliss! Although this compilation did overlook a couple of giant figures in film history (it forgot Jacques Rivette and Manoel de Oliveira, while including Ettore Scola), at least it was trying to reflect the wide world of movies.

9. The Academy prefers its Best Picture to be good for you.
It was one of the peculiarities of last night’s show that Spotlight won only two awards—the first one given, Best Original Screenplay, and last one, Best Picture. Before the show, it was widely considered to be in a three-picture race for the top prize with The Revenant and The Big Short, the former bombastically exciting, the latter darkly comic. You kept hearing that it had peaked. Yet it won in the end, and it’s not hard to see why. Of the three, Spotlight is the one that most perfectly hits Hollywood’s liberal sweet spot. It’s a celebration of working together to tell truth to power and change the system. And unlike its rivals, it leaves you feeling good, which makes Hollywood feel good about itself, too. That was just what industry voters wanted on a night when they were so often reminded of why they need to feel ashamed.